The Terrorist Attack on Mumbai, India and the Media

By Ben Furman, former FBI Counterterrorism Chief

Here are my thoughts about the media coverage of the terrorist attack on Mumbai, formerly Bombay, India. The media, as it often does, caused my blood pressure to skyrocket by its soft-pedaling of the identification of the terrorist attackers as Muslims. I guess reporting this fact was something it considered offensive and politically incorrect. But this reporting by omission follows the media’s template of not calling terrorists “terrorists” for fear of creating more terrorists; or, refusing to call our war on terrorism a war by defining it as, “regional conflicts of opposing factions.” Only the media can make sense of this circular reasoning. At least the media is consistent. It does the same with illegal aliens that have invaded our country by calling them undocumented workers; or failing to mention in the descriptions of bank robbers that the perpetrators are black, Mexican, and so on. Rather than helping, this ostrich approach to reporting is divisive. We have to get past the reluctance to discuss things as they are without the socially engineered egg shell-walking.

And what’s up with the media’s apparent lack of interest to delve deeper into the tragic fate of the innocent victims at the Chabad Jewish Center? Was the terrorist targeting of the Center about the State of Israel, or was it just a continuation of the gruesome medieval tradition of anti-Semitism? This answer is worth a line or a couple of words from the media.

Why wasn’t the media “all over” the Muslim organizations that rail with an uncontrolled fanaticism against cartoons of Mohammed that they consider insulting? Shouldn’t there be an explanation why they remained eerily silent about the atrocities in Mumbai?

The Mumbai slaughter should be a wake-up call to all Western liberals who believe that jihadism can be defeated through “I’m okay; you’re okay” happy talk. Many Americans, particularly those who buy into the media’s global vision, seem to have been lulled into a false feeling of security because we haven’t been attacked here since 9/11. But Muslim-based jihadism is a world that continues to pose a serious threat to every open democratic society.

A study of ancient history shows us that great civilizations, from Egypt and Persia to Rome and Byzantium, broke down in stages of superficially interspersed tranquil decades. We’re on the same glide path but we're moving at a greatly accelerated downward rate – the time spans are getting compressed. Because of the unprecedented fragility of our communications systems, our intertwined power grids and complex transportation systems, the technological West is highly vulnerable to sabotage and destruction. We need the media to step up, minus its rose colored glasses, and report the world as is, rather than the way the media wants it to be.

So how long will it take us to drive the final nail into jihadism? If we are ever vigilant and take the fight to the terrorists, it will probably take a hundred years or more. And if we don't defeat the jihadists our world as we know it will end.